The GAZE LGBT Film Festival has announced an exciting line-up of Irish and international guest filmmakers taking part in the special 25th edition which runs 3rd-7th August 2017. Filmmakers will be discussing their work and meeting audiences during Q&As after films that explore a diverse range of subjects and stories all the way from the sun, skin and escape of a gay holiday cruise in Dreamboat to a couple’s hellish journey by boat through the Scottish Highlands in the thriller The Dark Mile.
I’m thrilled to welcome such an exciting group of filmmakers from our anniversary programme. We have a 25-year history of bringing audiences and filmmakers together to discuss and reflect on LGBT film and culture both from Ireland and across the world and this year will be no exception. Appropriately our guests will be both looking back through our collective past in films like Queerama and Against the Law, while also reflecting modern gay life and storytelling in the two very different voyages of Dreamboat and The Dark Mile.
Our retrospective screening of The Crying Game gives us a chance to reflect on the journey of Trans visibility in Ireland from one of perceived sensationalism to having some of the most progressive laws in Europe.
Noel Sutton, Festival Director of GAZE
Following up on her recent moving documentary exploration of her mother’s Irish birth family, After the Dance, director Daisy Asquith returns to Ireland for the Irish premiere of Queerama. A century of British gay experience is brought to life, selected from the extensive BFI Archive, from the first gay relationship on film in 1919 through to the sexual liberation of the 21st century queer and transgender scene.
German filmmaker Tristan Ferland Milewski brings us aboard a seven-day gay cruise with passengers from 89 nations soaking up the sun, sea and naked skin in his documentary Dreamboat. It’s a trip of liberation where day and night, time and space melt with the rhythm of party music but it’s also an inner odyssey, at odds with its shiny veneer, through internal boundaries and the intricacies of modern gay life.
Irish director Fergus O’Brien will be at the festival to discuss his powerful new docudrama Against the Law, marking 50 years since the decriminalisation of male homosexuality in the UK. Following the story of Peter Wildeblood (played by Daniel Mays), a journalist whose partner turned Queen’s Evidence against him in one of the most explosive trials of the 1950s but who emerged from prison determined to change the draconian laws against homosexuality.
A taut and terrifying psychological thriller, The Dark Mile, sees a London lesbian couple take a boat trip to reconnect after a personal tragedy. Their idyllic journey into the Scottish Highlands soon turns into a horrifying ordeal. Director Gary Love will take part in a Q&A to discuss this gripping original work and its clear nods to cinema masterpieces such as Deliverance and Rosemary’s Baby.
These guest events are just one part of GAZE 2017 Film Festival programme of the very best in contemporary LGBT films, discussions and retrospective screenings in a special programme that reflects the festival’s 25-year history of celebrating LGBT films and filmmakers. Full details of all the events are available at www.gaze.ie. Guests will also be in attendance for the festival’s Opening Night World Premiere of The 34th – The Story of Marriage Equality in Ireland with full details to be released soon.
The GAZE Film Festival is sponsored by Accenture, funded by Funding Partners The Arts Council of Ireland, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, and Dublin City Council, and is supported by Venue Partner Light House Cinema. Other additional partners also provide valuable support.